All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches. Imagine a modern American publisher confronted with the Old Testament as a new manuscript submitted to him for the first time. It is not difficult to think what his comments would be, for example, on the genealogies. 'My dear sir, ' he would say, 'this chapter lacks pep; you can't expect your reader to be interested in a mere string of proper names of persons about whom you tell so little. You have begun your story, I admit, in fine style, and at first I was very favourably impressed, but you have altogether too much wish to tell it all. Pick out the highlights, take out the superfluous matter, and bring me back your manuscript when you have reduced it to a reasonable length.' So the modern publisher would speak, knowing the modern reader's fear of boredom. Bertrand Russell
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
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Friedrich Nietzsche
I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never...
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Edward Gorey
The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.
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Michel Houellebecq
Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island.
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Christopher Moore
What's this about?"" Finally. Interest, " was the only response." If this is one of your tricks.." Like the time Torin had ordered hundreds of blow-up dolls and placed them throughout the fortress, all because Paris had foolishly complained about the lack of female companionship...
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Gena Showalter
More Quotes By Bertrand Russell
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean...
